When will my baby start remembering things?

Even in his first two months, your baby can recognize familiar faces and voices, especially those he sees every day. Newborns can recognize their mothers' voice at birth, and breastfed babies can recognize their mother's smell after one week. This kind of recognition is the first indication of memory, although it's very different from remembering the details of specific episodes.

Your baby's recognition memory — the ability to identify people and objects he has seen before after a delay or time apart — will increase dramatically during his first year. Experiments have shown that at 3 months, babies can remember new pictures or toys shown to them one to six days previously.

By the time he's 9 months old, your baby will be able to remember more specific information, such as where his toys are in your house. He'll also be able to imitate actions he's seen as long as a week before. These skills indicate that babies this age have recall memory — the ability to remember some details of a specific experience for a short amount of time — though they still don't remember most of their experiences.

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